We bring frontier technologies to market

We back bold founders who are willing to explore uncharted territories. We believe that great rewards always come after great risks are taken. We survive together and thrive together.

A new frontier

Outpost Capital is the first Silicon Valley based Venture Capital fund that focuses on VR/AR and frontier technologies, while having a strong presence in China. As one of the foremost early stage investors in virtual reality, augmented reality and blockchain technologies, we partner with some of the best entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and around the world.

Areas of focus

icon-ar

VR/AR

icon-blockchain

Blockchain

icon-ai

Artificial intelligence

icon-drone

Drones

Our team

Ryan Wang

Sha Zhou

Cherie Liu

Sami Ramly

Zhongyang Xu

Ryan Wang is Co-founder and General Partner of Outpost Capital, the first Silicon Valley-based venture capital fund focusing on VR/AR/new frontier technology with a strong presence in China.

Ryan is known as a VR/AR expert who oversees VR/AR companies in the US and greater China, with solid insights and strong connections in both markets.

Prior to Outpost, Ryan was a Venture Partner at CLI Ventures, a $200 million boutique VC fund based in Palo Alto. He led the TMT sector at CLI and had made a number of investments in VR/AR, Drones and Artificial Intelligence. Early in his career, Ryan has compiled a comprehensive and successful career as an investment banker at Citigroup and Societe Generale in New York City. Ryan is a snowboarder, world explorer and owner of many stylish hats.

Sha Zhou is the Co-founder and General Partner of Outpost Capital. He is a writer, geek, venture capitalist, and foreign affairs visionary. Meanwhile, Sha is advising Chinas Central Government on key issues such as the Beijing Olympics, Taiwan, Global RMB and the One Belt One Road development strategy, gaining much inspiration from FDRs New-Era Great Depression strategies.

Sha Zhou started as a software engineer from 1996 and worked in both technical and management position for companies such as HP, Alteon, NetScaler, NetScreen, and Juniper, etc. Sha founded and invested in numerous startup companies, spanning from robotics, drones, block chains, semiconductors, social networking, securities, computer visions, etc. Having critical resource and connections in both the U.S. and China, Sha is in a unique position to connect both worlds to form a strategic solution for new frontier technology to thrive.

Cherie Liu is the Vice President of investment at Outpost Venture Capital. Cherie is on a mission to help entrepreneurs build and grow profitable business cross borders. She specialized in AR/VR/Gaming, FinTech, Blockchain, AI and Cleantech.

Trained as a investment banker in New York City , she has helped mega private equity fund in the US finance multi-million deals. She specialized in cross-border investment. She got her master degree from Columbia University in New York City. She is a pianist, golfer and foodie.

Sami Ramly is a VR/AR Product Leader and an Entrepreneur-In-Residence (EIR) at Outpost Capital. He previously led product management at Wevr, the renowned VR startup producing and distributing award-winning VR experiences (2 out of 10 Best VR of 2016 according to TechCrunch). Prior to that, Sami worked in 3D Printing & 3D Scanning at Microsoft, where he shipped Microsofts first 3D Scan app for Windows 10. He also held several other roles in engineering, business and product management at startups and accelerators, including StartX.

Sami is currently a Board Observer and Advisor for Virtuleap, and a Mentor at Stanford, UCLA, SIGGRAPH, and VRARA. He also sits on the Executive Board of Predictera, the Advisory Board of UCLAxs Product Management Program, the Advisory Board of USC Marshalls Entrepreneur and Venture Management Association, and the Advisory Board of Rabbit Hole VR, Stanfords VR/AR maker community, featured in Business Insider as a place where the next big thing in VR could come.

Zhongyang has more than 20 years of experience working with Chinese government entities and startup projects. He has expertise in operations and management. He joined the Chinese unicorn blockchain company Jingtum as its COO and started working on blockchain research as early as 2012. He has joined OutpostVC as our manager in China focusing on business development and post-investment management.

MOAC

Upload VR

The Rogue Initative

Natilus

Supermedium

Humense

Pingpad

Aconite

Jingtum

Visby

TheWaveVR

Kite & Lightning

Modal

Jido

Fable

Big Box

MOAC is a revolutionary platform with a Multi-Blockchain smart contract and P2P service network to efficiently build and scale decentralized applications. By leveraging Multi-Blockchain sharding, the MOAC platform increases system capacity and performance, reduces transaction fees for smart contracts, and incentivizes mobile and desktop users to compete for processing rewards.

The platform is a Multi-Blockchain software and deployment service solution for rapid development of decentralized applications (Dapps) and smart contracts on a scalable P2P service network. By using an advanced layered architecture for asynchronous smart contracts and a variety of configurable consensus systems (including proof of work and proof of stake), the MOAC platform enhances existing Dapps with additional functionality, and scalability solutions. This advancement increases processing speed by several levels of magnitude (10-100x) and sets a new market standard for transactional efficiency.

UploadVR is dedicated to bringing virtual reality technology to the consumer masses. We believe that VR technology is fundamentally transforming the way we learn, interact and understand the world around us. Blog posts covers Virtual Reality News, Events, and Talent.

The Rogue Initiative is a next-generation production studio producing original, global, entertainment properties in collaboration with world-class filmmakers, studios, and technology companies.

At the forefront of Film, Television, Games and VR convergence, our in-house team of producers, designers, engineers and creative experts are forging and elevating traditional storytelling with real-time interactive technologies.

Natilus is a small and growing team of extremely passionate engineers working on re-thinking the next generation of freight aircraft. We are builders and designers with who have worked on 25+ aircraft programs in general aviation, commercial and military aviation.

We believe that reducing the cost of airfreight by 50% will bring fresher produce into our stores, enable cross-border e-commerce to flourish and enable low infrastructure regions to develop. To make that happen, we need a new type of vehicle and a different way of thinking.

Supermedium is the virtual reality browser. Navigate hundreds of pieces of VR content that load in seconds without any additional installs. All content is served from the Web directly to your headset.

We are establishing the Web as a legitimate foundation for virtual reality. Unlike native VR applications that require installing gigabytes of data and then take a minute to load, web-based VR content loads in seconds. VR content is published as standard webpages. Just as we click links to jump from page to page, Supermedium lets us surf the wild VR Web, frollicking from world to world.

Humense is a communication network and Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR) and Virtual Reality (VR) platform. Our lead product is volumetric video. Whereas 360 video positions the audience in one 3D position, with minimal impact and no body, volumetric video/holographic presence enables you to walk around "inside" the video and be in the scene and "with" other people in a spatially and neuropsychologically true sense. Humense enables you to experience embodiment and shared impact.

Our cloud-based network solution overcomes the two largest hurdles for AR VR to become mainstream a) capturing and displaying human form in true space/light and b) making it social, scalable and efficient for maximum storytelling and sharing capabilities.

Pingpad is an enterprise-grade hosted service with Slacks secure SSO for access, and public/private permissions set for Slack Channels, full HTTPS and 256-bit data encryption at rest.

Aconite is a platform for discovering Mixed Reality (MR) stories that transform the mundane world into something extraordinary - stories that sit at the intersection of adventure, narrative and game.

Aconites MR toolkit currently supports augmented reality (AR), geolocation, puzzles/game mechanics, messaging, artifacts, and audiovisual media. We believe that the world is becoming playable. The future is a garden of forking desire paths, existing in physical and digital space simultaneously. Every new corner contains a secret. Come with us though the looking glass.

Jingtum is a high-tech company, located in Wuxi New Area National Software Park focusing on developing the blockchain technology platform to provide both business and personal digital asset interconnection, interflow, sharing, and co-management of technical ecosystem architecture for enterprises and personal digital assets. Founded in 2014, Jingtum Technology officially operated in China and started the business application of blockchain technology in China.

Jingtums core staff are from top Silicon Valley and Chinese blockchain technical companies and other key major internet segments, such as financial, telecommunications, security, and big data industries. In 2015, Jingtum built the first commercial application based on blockchain technology in China. Jingtum has the only blockchain technology in China that has been pilot ran on large-scale applications with the local government on digital assets.

We’re building the core, foundational technology for VR and AR content: a file format, a codec, for holographic images. This includes encoders for CG content, and solutions for live action capture and translation, plus the tools to transmit, decode, and display content on these new devices.

Holographic imaging is important for new, multi-perspective displays: virtual reality, augmented reality, and holographic panel displays. For VR and AR, you need continuous perspectives to properly deliver a correct scene to the user as she moves around in space (often called positional tracking in VR). And next-gen holographic panels are just around the corner, soon, your phone, tablet, computer, and television screens will be able to deliver multiple perspectives, like a holographic panel.

TheWaveVR is a platform for people who love music, enabling them to view, host, and socialize in shows world wide, anytime, anywhere.

We’re empowering artists and music lovers alike by transforming the way people connect through music.

Music creators can fully customize how their audience experiences the music, whether its by transforming the venue from a realistic nightclub to outer space with a click of a button, or putting on the most unimaginable light show ever.

Fans wont have to travel the globe or miss out on their favorite DJs, musicians or festivals and can experience the music like never before, while socializing in totally new ways alongside their friends.

Kite & Lightning is a cinematic VR company that blends gaming, social and story to create emotionally transformative experiences. Founded by film industry veterans in 2013, the company is currently creating immersive computer-generated (CG) worlds that meld cinematic storytelling with interactive gaming. Known for its unprecedented technical and creative innovations in VR storytelling, the Los Angeles-based startup has succeeded in many genres to critical acclaim such as the Cannes Lions festival and the Toronto International Film Festival POP exhibits. Recent projects include a 4D VR experience for NBCs The Voice featuring Pharrell Williams, Adam Levine, Blake Shelton, & Gwen Stefani; and Lionsgates first VR narrative, a hybrid live action and CG experience starring Kate Winslet, Mekhi Phifer and Miles Teller

Modal has created an affordable free-roam virtual reality platform for turn-key commercial use

Available to family entertainment centers, regional theme parks, and those who want to wow guests, Modal offers reliable and affordable end-to-end solutions, designed specifically with operator needs in mind.

Jido is bringing in the next wave of AR where digital content can have a shared and persistent life in the real world. Our API uses intimate understanding of a users spatial context to preserve AR experiences across users and devices. Our research team came out of the Stanford Artifical Intelligence Labs and the Cornell Robot Learning Lab.

A VR/AR studio spun out of Facebooks Oculus Story Studio and building Wolves in the Walls and the Lucy Project - an interactive AR/VR character that lives in the home.

Fable Studios other upcoming projects include Derailed, which involves two people moving through a story together; the interactive illustrated documentary 10; Magic River Boat Ride, an animated VR experience; and Origin, which will experiment with episodic storytelling. They also embody another key philosophy for the studio: they are all made in VR using tools like Quill, which was created during the development of Dear Angelica.

Team-based action game with insane physics-driven power-ups. Shoot, duck behind cover, and coordinate with teammates…all in glorious VR! Play both Singleplayer Story Mode and Online Multiplayer!

Pre-ICO Porfolio

Blockv

Quantstamp

Ost

Pryze

Bee

IoTex

Raiden

Overclock

BLOCKv provides developers with the building blocks to design the experiential economy of the future and unlock new opportunities for businesses within this growing ecosystem. Our mission is to create the next-generation digital goods economy.

BLOCKv provides a development platform and community to create and distribute vAtoms: dynamic, compelling digital goods that shatter each roadblock. The BLOCKv platform will redeﬁne the role of digital objects in society and commerce and will exponentially increase the value that you get from the digital world.

Quantstamp is the protocol for securing smart contracts. Within blockchain, security is synonymous with credibility. For mission critical projects, comprehensive security is required to ensure continued success.

As domain experts in application security and secure software development, Quantstamp understands the techniques required to ensure the security of your smart contract. We understand the evolving complexities of smart contracts and are positioned to help our clients understand what aspects of their business can benefit from the blockchain and smart contracts.

We are on a mission to be the blockchain platform of choice for forward-thinking businesses. The OST suite helps businesses gain competitive advantage with blockchain. OST KIT is our complete blockchain toolkit, now in its second Alpha phase.

OST KIT gives you all the tools you need to run your blockchain-powered economy on open scalable sidechains and launch your own Branded Token without the ICO drama.

Pryze is creating the first sweepstakes automation protocol built on the Ethereum blockchain. We are developing our application and website to make it easy for new and veteran sweepstakes creators to easily run and maintain sweepstakes.

Our aim is to bake compliance, security, and scalability into the Pryze protocol and therefore eliminate the need for costly administrative services and hosting platforms. We make all of this possible through the power of the Ethereum blockchain.

We Are Reinventing the Home Sharing Economy Our team is an experienced and talented group of former employees from Google, Facebook, Uber, and Civic. We’re building a middleman free, peer-to-peer network of hosts and guests on the decentralized web.

Bee Protocols provide developers the foundation to build decentralized applications (dApps). Our Protocols are open source solutions for managing secure Payments, resolving disputes through Arbitration, and building a Reputation system that combines secure identity with peer ratings.

IoTeX is a decentralized network for the Internet of Things powered by a Privacy-Centric Blockchain. Despite its rapid evolution, IoT is still far from reaching mass adoption and lacks “killer applications” that would draw new users to the ecosystem due to issues such as low scalability, high operating cost, privacy concerns and lack of functional values.

IoTeX is tackling this problem by introducing token economy into IoT spaces as we strongly believe that crypto incentives as well as the community effort are the two key forces to propel innovations in IoT space. In short, IoTeX is the next generation IoT-oriented blockchain platform with strong scalability, privacy, isolatability and developability for incubating new IoT applications and ecosystems.

The Raiden Network is an off-chain scaling solution, enabling near-instant, low-fee and scalable payments. It is complementary to the Ethereum blockchain and works with any ERC20 compatible token. The Raiden projects goal is to research state channel technology, define protocols and develop reference implementations.

Blockchains do not scale well because there needs to be global consensus on the order and outcome of all transfers. The basic idea of the Raiden Network is to avoid the blockchain consensus bottleneck. This is done by leveraging a network of payment channels which allow to securely transfer value off-chain, i.e without involving the blockchain for every transfer.

We believe the Cloud should be distributed and decentralized so that no one provider can control the internet. The future of our society will rely on cloud infrastructure, and it is critical that it does not sit in the hands of any centralized authority. This is the only way the internet can stay fair, competitive and secure.

Therefore we build open source tools to distribute things seamlessly across multiple cloud providers and solutions that allow all cloud services to be trustworthy and compatible with each other. It also does not hurt that making things globally federated also makes them lightning fast.

Investment philosophy

1

We invest in early stage startups in VR/AR and new emerging technologies on a global level. We believe China will be playing a vital role to accelerate the mass consumer adoption. We have a strong network and extensive resources in the Chinese VR/AR ecosystem and the frontier tech industry. This allows us to leverage deep insights from these industries to partner with the best entrepreneurs.

2

At Outpost, making an investment is not the end of a journey, but the very beginning of a new fruitful relationship. An investment is our commitment with stronger binding of deep trust and mutual understanding. We have the utmost respect for the entrepreneurs we partner with, and we leverage our time, experience and expertise to push them further in their ventures.

3

Founder-problem fit: as a founder, we want you to demonstrate you are one of the top 10 people in the world to solve the particular problem you are tackling. This is our definition of a "world-class team". VC-startup fit: We will not make an investment unless it is certain that we are able to bring a lot of value to your startup. We believe that even the "hottest deals" cannot be as successful without the right VC partnership in place.

Outpost

Supermedium launches its VR web browser backed by Y Combinator

Supermedium wants to become the home for VR memes, small games, stores and VR web pages in a way that becomes a sort of Yahoo Directory for the new medium. The team’s co-founders (Diego Marcos, Kevin Ngo and Diego Goberna) were all part of the Mozilla team behind A-Frame, an open-source web framework for building VR that has been pretty influential among early WebVR developers. As may be expected, the team has more features in store for Supermedium that move beyond content discovery as they focus on building up a browser that attracts interest from VR developers as well as users. As the augmented reality space grows, the team hopes to add focus there as well.

MOAC Is The Infrastructure Blockchain That Can Outperform Ethereum

When it went live in 2015, Ethereum brought a wave of innovation to the world of blockchain. Its introduction of a decentralized app (dApp) ecosystem and smart contracts sparked new ways of thinking about the possibilities of decentralization -- prompting the initial coin offering (ICO) surge we have witnessed over the past 18 months. Three years later, the Mother of All Chains (MOAC) has emerged as a network capable of outpacing Ethereum. How? With multi-layered architecture that allows for MicroChains (sharding) and Cross-chain transactions.